Monday, Mar. 22, 1943

Counter-Attack

In Russia the spotlight was on the south again, but this time the whole aspect of the front was importantly changed.

The Germans, not the Russians, were on the march. In a fortnight, German forces pressed the Russians back some 80 miles along a 200-mile front (see map. p. 26). Below Kharkov the line was pushed right back to the Donets River. Strong forces moved to attack Kharkov itself.

The question was no longer whether the Germans would be able to hold the line of the Dnieper, or keep the Ukraine. The question now was whether the Germans would have the strength or the desire to mount another huge offensive in Russia this spring and summer.

Winter Is a Traitor. Since November and Stalingrad, the Russians had been moving forward. Winter had enlisted in the Russian services of supply, which depended, in winter, on three things--rails, wheeled vehicles, and above all, snow vehicles; snows had helped sleighs, had favored horseflesh over motors, the wooden ski over the steel halftrack. The Russians had learned how to move mechanized armies through the snow. The Russians' hope, they knew, was to keep moving and to keep the Germans off balance. This they could do--and did impressively well --until they had to pause to regroup their forces, and until they ran ahead of supplies.

Then, just as winter betrayed Hitler in 1941, it deserted the Russians this year. Thaws came early. And they came just at the time when the Russians had crossed the Donets into the area where the Germans had adjusted the gauge of rail lines (in white on map). The Russians were suddenly deprived of two of their three methods of transport and were dependent on wheels and muddy roads.

At the very moment when the Red attackers reached the tensile limit of their supply lines, the Germans threw twelve fresh tank and infantry divisions into the fight. Moscow said that the arrival of these forces involved a lessening of the German forces in France--hence renewed Russian complaints about bearing the whole weight of war.

The Germans attacked at an opportune time and a crucial place. The Russians were shifting their attention northward (see col. 3). The Russian excuse for the southern reverses--"unequal engagement," "numerically superior enemy"--disregarded the fact that it is the business of generalship never to be out-concentrated. The place of attack made the most of the Russian transport difficulties. The Russians, though unable to use Germans' narrower rail lines, had advanced just beyond three important rail junctions, Krasnograd, Lozovaya and Pavlograd, and the Germans recovered them early in the counter-drive.

Kharkov Is a Hinge. The Germans did not encircle and destroy the Red Armies which had been moving toward the Dnieper. On the Russian side, what had been vanguard became rearguard and fought as fiercely going backward as it had going forward. What were to have been the arms of a German pincer west of the Donets embraced emptiness, converged, and drove frontally on Kharkov.

Kharkov was of supreme importance. Without it, the German salient reaching eastward into the Donets basin would be vulnerable to flank attack from the north, the German north-south lines would be seriously interrupted. With it, the Germans would be in the best position for an advance (if advance the Germans can) into the soft area between Stalingrad and Moscow. Early this week the Russians admitted that they had lost Kharkov.

Donets for Defense? If the Germans do succeed in re-establishing the Donets line, the net result of the Russian drive in the south will have been a great victory; Hitler's advances of a year will have been erased--almost. The Germans still hold all of the Crimea and the Novorossiisk beachhead in the Caucasus, which they did not have at the beginning of the 1942 offensive. But the net result will be disappointing, if only because hopes for the Russians had gone so high.

The German drive in southern Russia was essentially defensive; it did not insure another great offensive in 1943. But it was a nonetheless startling reminder that the Germans are still capable of fast, massive, admirably executed offensive moves.

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